( car problems )

============

So, everything under the cut above the divider has been taken care of. I called my insurance company, they sent out a towing company, the towing man was awesome when I explained my problem to him and before he towed it, he attached some cables to all that gunk under the hood (clearly, I know cars) and attempted to start my car. ....aaaaand voila. I think my eyes almost popped out of my head when I heard the engine turn over.

In other words, my car is still in the parking lot. (^^)

Not going to leave until tomorrow morning. I don't feel safe driving at night in the boonies knowing something's up with my car. But I still love H.E.R. (honto e rap) and will try my best to not get frustrated with her, even though I was ready to get a new car two hours ago. <3

I'm staying optimistic. This gives me plenty of time to work on my Linguistics final tonight, watch Pure if I have time, and clean my apartment.

It can always be worse. I have a nice warm bed to sleep in tonight even if it's not in Illinois.

Finally, I am at the point where I can go home and finish the rest of my finals via email. Sex & Pop 4 page paper is done, Translation of capsule archive interview + accompanying paper is done, and JP fiction paper was turned in today after working on it all night last night. Work tomorrow morning until 1pm, and then I am home free. I'm probably going to take the bus in because it only makes me 2-5 minutes late instead of 10, so I'm not foreseeing myself getting out of here until 2pm. After I get home I'm going to need to make some final revisions on my Japanese paper (due at 5pm Thursday) and do my final assignment for Linguistics, but a few of us from class worked on it together tonight and we pinpointed the past assignments where all the answers are, so it should be pretty simple. :D

I've talked to my mom about the leak in my car (of course, she's my momma) and she's really made me feel better. Who knows how long I've been driving around with it in my car. I'm only worried because it was pointed out to me - I could be driving around as if nothing was wrong but they've planted that notion in my head. =( At any rate, I will have that extra bottle of steering fluid with me just in case, and I'm going to check to see if there's any puddles under my car before I leave tomorrow. Still, I'm leaving this here as a "this is what happened" message...if I don't check in by Thursday, something may have happened (=_=)'''' What can I say, hope for the best and expect the worst? Is that how the saying goes? Anyway, my mom's so awesome...she knows just what to say to me. Crossing my fingers that I make it home safely tomorrow.

My Keira marathons continue on. I watched The Jacket with Sabrina this weekend. Kind of screwed up but I suppose the ending was nice. King Arthur today, that was...meh. Not as shitty as the critics made it out to be, though. I'm so excited to have Princess of Thieves coming in soon though, bweee! <3 Mmf, Keira. Love love love. I have a feeling I'll be watching Bend It Like Beckham for the umpteenth time when I go home. Otherwise, Pure is coming tomorrow.

Tired. I stayed up last night listening to some of my favorite Arai Akino music and watching the last two episodes of Shinigami no Ballad (not in that order). Before I knew it, it was 3am. And I woke up around 9:30am. Blegh. Soon I will be home with my lovely cat. <3

Topic of discussion: Incubus's "Are You In." It occured to me a few months after I started listening to it that it sounds very much like "R U N" - run! I am convinced Brandon Boyd is telling me to escape the clutches of conformity now.

Dear lord, not even 10 minutes into the damn movie and I'm crying at "Up." I saw it in theaters. I almost cried then too but the added pressure of my mother sitting next to me and not wanting to be embarrassed helped me out of it.

I used to be able to watch movies with a poker face (-_-);;; Well, I would laugh, and I would laugh if I saw my mom or anybody crying, too.

Old meme is traditional. This is one I've done for a few years now.

Take the first entry from every month and copy/paste the first line or two of the entry. This is your year in review.

January
I have a lot to talk about I think....let's start with dramas.

February
Thank you to everyone who commented on my last posts. I think I have an idea of what I'm going to be doing next year...but we'll see. Nothing's set in stone. It's still difficult for me to think about.

March
My stressful week finally ended and I have been able to enjoy the weekend. For the past two weeks I was so stressed out about the karaoke night the JCA was putting on because nothing was going right, and on top of that I had a Japanese test in one class, a Japanese skit in another class, and I had to deal with those ulcer-causing things at work.

April
So, so sick. I'm only going to Japanese today. I'm going to need to borrow someone's textbook for my Astronomy test over whatever we're studying now, because I've only been to one lecture.

May
I got a DreamWidth account thanks to sequindreams <3 Right now I'm still kind of playing around with it but I like it. I won't move from LJ, but add me if you wish.

June
I went to Iowa on Saturday for my cousin's graduation party and then stayed with the boy in his nearby hometown. The next day we drove back to my place, a road trip of wrong turns and hilarity, and the next day we went into the city to find things to do. Then he left. The end.

July
I was so looking forward to sleeping in this weekend. Sleep in tomorrow, sleep in Sunday, and for Saturday I'd be okay waking up to an alarm as long as it meant going to Six Flags. Naturally, my plans became overturned.

August
Whilst Googling for Mukai Osamu, I discovered he's the star of this year's sex issue of an-an, an annual issue that features one male actor almost completely in the nude. Buttshots are prevalent, and past participants include Narimiya Hiroki, Matsujun, and Yamapi.

September
My phone is broken and my heart is heavy. (T___T)

October
I can't wait to go home this weekend...which starts Thursday night for me, actually. It kind of sucks that my birthday falls on a Sunday this year so I'll be driving back to Iowa then, but it's okay. <3

November
Aaand the presentations are finally out of the way until December, I think! <3 Finally. Last week I discovered I was to present in Linguistics on Tuesday (aka yesterday) instead of Thursday that week, so I was ecstatic because it meant I had the whole weekend to work on my presentation.

December
First day back was yesterday. I realized I left my cell phone on the coffee table when I was standing at the bus stop and decided it was too late to go back for it. (I was right.) Great start.

----

I guess it's been a busy year for school. And barf at June. But I think I hated him by that time anyway. Whatever. Mistakes were made and learned from.

Hey car experts, help me out.

How long can I go without fixing a leak in my power steering hose? My power windows broke yesterday right before work, and when I was getting them fixed I was told by the people at the Pontiac dealership that there is a leak in that. I'm going home on Wednesday and didn't want to wait around for the part to come in (they said "middle of next week"), so I'm just going to take my chances and drive as little as possible until Wednesday. I hate winter weather. (=_=)

So yeah, that's what happened yesterday. And I'm annoyed because Old Navy didn't have the boots I wanted and I didn't see anything else I wanted, so I remain bootless once more.

Started work on one of my final papers this morning, the one for Sex & Pop. I thought it would be a struggle and while it has slightly been one, I find that I am already nearing the page limit in a dangerous way, even after I took off my margin cheats. Geezus...

After this, I have four more assignments, three of which are papers and two of those papers might as well already be written. Score.

Saw The Princess and the Frog last night! Loved it. Will probably see it again during break with family. Sad, but good.

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for eight days without fail.

Thursday (which would have been the proper day to have made this final post) was my last day of classes for the semester. Aside from the five papers I have due next week, I am DONE. Done with stupid Japanese class and the bajillion presentations and papers I had to write for it while not learning anything. Sweeeeet.

At the end of the night I went to Abbie & Jazmyn's with Sabrina and Cristina and we watched Miss Pettigrew. That was nice.

It's been a very hectic day involving my car breaking and then finding out it's sick in addition to broke (the broke is now fixed but my car remains sick). But I'm so tired, so I'll save it for another post.

Go to your Calendar and find the first entry for each month of 2009.
Post the first few sentences or so of it in your journal, and that's your "Year In Review."

Jan
It's 2009 people,
& black is the new 'it'

Feb
Went to Old Sturbridge Village today thanks to Charlie's free admission for up to six from Sovereign. Tio, Titi, Mom & Dad all came. It was a ton of fun with the family, etc.

March
Very tired. Very busy weekend. Sucks it's over.. here comes another 6-day work week.

April
Ugh. Love the Wonder Girls when they're at their best but they are absolutely no FinKL. This was just.. awful. I remember way back when FinKL made their "comeback" with this album.. it was awesome from start to finish and still one of my favorite CDs.

May
Whiny people make me sick. So, so annoyed with everything. I'm annoyed with my job. I'm annoyed with my life. I'm annoyed with people. I'm annoyed with people who get everything and still, it's not enough.

June
The new Terminator movie was surprisingly good. Considering the third one was like the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen in my entire life (I won't even dare mention the TV series), I was happy, happy.

July
This was actually for Facebook but hell, it took long enough to compile everything. Youtube links for all! "Once you have been tagged, you are supposed to write down 25 songs you cannot live without."

August
Duuude I am so on my way to the top.

September
I received my new 'lil netbook on Thurs. It's totally tiny & adorable and will certainly do the job until I purchase the Mac Pro I've been eying.

October
I still love you, Livejournal. But writing to you takes time, something I'm really having trouble finding these days. And while time may pop by now & again, it doesn't seem to stick around much.

November
Love, love, LOVE this super sexy 'gal group. Great dance moves, pretty chicks & funky beats... it seriously took way too long for this album to drop.

December
It's that wonderful time of year folks. I ♥ you. & therefore, if you would like to be on my happy Christmas/Holiday mailing list for 2009...

Man. This year was boring as hell. Actually, 2009 went by wicked, wicked fast. Jan through August literally flew by.

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for eight days without fail.

I can't believe it, but we were actually given a snow day. I think they've only cancelled classes twice in the three and a half years I've been here, once being today, and the other time only being because we had an icestorm. I woke up this morning at 8am for work and immediately sat up to look out the left side of my window. I saw a big white mound of snow about a foot tall (=_=) Now, I live on the third floor...so this shocked me. Having just woken up, I briefly wondered if I was completely snowed in, but then stood up to look out the window and saw that it was only the bottom half of my window that was covered. It looks like a complete winter wonderland outside, though. The first thing I did after waking up was go to the UI's website and surprise, cancelled! <3 Then I had to figure out if I was going to be able to drive to work or not, but the bus was still running so I nabbed that in, being late to work by only about 10 minutes. Work was a breeze, and I got off an hour early despite being late.

So, I've just been working on homework and relaxing. I'm almost done with translating the capsule interview now. I have an urge to play video games like Final Fantasy, because that's what I used to do in high school whenever we'd get snow days.

One of my friends created a Facebook event the other day for a school-wide snowball fight. It started out with about 40 attendees (I was the first besides him, whooo!) and has snowballed (no pun intended, heeee) to nearly 3000. Amazing. I'm going to hop the bus again to get there. Pretty sure I can't even get my car out of the parking lot. I'd like tomorrow to be cancelled as well but I doubt that will happen, because I have two presentations and my luck has NEVER been that good.

Time to go back to homework. <3

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for eight days without fail.

Haha, I thought it was still day 5. Oops. Today I went to eat lunch with Rachel and we had lots of fun catching up. And the soup I got on my co-worker's recommendation was really good!

I just sneezed and got it on my monitor. =/

So, the blizzard is upon us. Lots of snow, people freaking out and closing the mall but not classes. =P Actually, it's probably a good thing the mall got closed tonight. I was going to go shopping with Rachel because we want boots (I want AdoraBoots!) - or in my case, need boots - but this is for the best because I still have a huge amount of translating work to do. It's also a good thing Tuesday is not a TV night. xD

Time to get to work.

EDIT: Hongo Kanata is in Silk! I LOVE HIM HE'S SO CUTE AND JAILBAIT-Y.

Nothing has made me happy yet today, so no om meme meme until tonight when I get home.

I just want to talk about the snow outside.

Holy crap.

It looks like we've got about 2-3" already, which isn't a big deal for Iowa, but by tomorrow we're expected to wake up to about 7" total. Sigh. Naturally, there's nothing back home. Meanwhile, we've got blizzard warnings and stuff here and "100% chance of snow" on the forecasts. It's not that I hate it. I'm perfectly fine with it when I don't have to leave my apartment. Unfortunately, I can't be hikki until probably Sunday. And I volunteered to work next Wednesday so I won't be able to come home until then. =( Boo. Oh well. Mo money.

Time to go get bundled up for class. I'm going to meet one of my old co-workers, Rachel, for lunch at the bagel shoppe. Going to be doing lots of walking today with a heavy backpack.

I need boots.

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for eight days without fail.

I just watched Pride & Prejudice with Keira Knightley. Oh, it left me so happy. Or whimsical. This was the first time I've seen it. I only knew of the story lightly from that Bollywoodish film Bride & Prejudice, and I'm sure I saw the Wishbone episode.

I have never read what is considered "a classic." (Not counting Shakespearean works assigned for high school literature classes.)

I love Keira <3 I'm slowly making my way through her filmography thanks to Netflix. Silk is next, or if I find time before bed tonight. I loved The Duchess, but it made me very sad. =/